About Assaf Stone

My name is Assaf Stone. I'm a senior ALM consultant in Microsoft's Premier Support for Developers Team.
When not being kept busy by work, my wife, or my four kids, I like to practice archery, read books, and listen to 70's and 80's rock music. I would also like to just relax, if I had any more spare time!

In the previous post we discussed what WIP (Work In Process/Progress) is, and how to track it. In this post I want to discuss why WIP limits are so important and how they contribute to improving the team’s effectiveness and … Continue reading →

What is WIP? WIP simply means work in process (also sometimes, Work In Progress). This metric simply measures how many items (features, stories, backlog items, tasks) your team have started to develop, but have yet to complete. In other words, … Continue reading →

In the previous post we discussed risk management, how many of us manage it today by attempting to control the likelihood of failure, and why we should instead focus on reducing the impact of failures, as a way to manage … Continue reading →

No offense, but despite your best intentions, you might not be handling risk properly. In this day and age, everything is software-dependent; even if you do not consider yourself a “software-firm” per-se, even if you are just running a small … Continue reading →

Note: While this post discusses impediments in VSTS, everything mentioned can be applied to TFS as well. Visual Studio Team Services (or VSTS) has great tools to support Scrum teams. The product owner can use the backlog and board to … Continue reading →

Background Both VSTS (Team Services) and TFS (Team Foundation Server) have a set organizational hierarchy. An individual developer belongs to a team. A project (also called Team Project, or TP) has multiple teams, and a VSTS account – as well … Continue reading →

In the following post, we will look at the difficulties in consuming packages from a different VSTS account, as part of a build process in our own account. Background Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) offers package management services. As per … Continue reading →

In this post, I will cover what Scrum Nexus is, where, when, and why you would want to use it, and how to set up VSTS best to accommodate your Scrum practices. As VSTS’s tooling is not yet perfect for … Continue reading →

About Me

Assaf Stone

My name is Assaf Stone. I'm a senior ALM consultant in Microsoft's Premier Support for Developers Team.
When not being kept busy by work, my wife, or my four kids, I like to practice archery, read books, and listen to 70's and 80's rock music. I would also like to just relax, if I had any more spare time!